“I see.  We’ve either got to take a more genial view of our contemporaries—­or scoot.”

“You may put it that way if you like.  It simply means that if we are to appeal to a wider public, we must take a wider view.  It’s surely in the interests of the public, and of literature, that we should not narrow the influence of the paper any more than we can help.  Not make the best criticism inaccessible.”  He continued to take the lofty and the noble view.  The habit was inveterate.  But his last remark started him on the way of self-justification.  “Of course I couldn’t go on with the paper if I hadn’t come to see this for myself.  The fact is, you cannot run a leading review on abstract principles.”

Rickman forbore to smile at the fulfilment of his prophecy.  Jewdwine’s “Absolute” had been obliged to “climb down.”

“Not,” said Jewdwine, “if that review is really to lead public opinion.”

“And certainly not,” said Rickman, “if public opinion is to lead the review.”

“In either case,” said Jewdwine nobly, “the principles remain.”

“Only they’re not applied?”

“They are not applied, because there is nothing to apply them to.  In the present state of literature a review like The Museion has no reason for its existence.”

“I don’t know.  It was a very useful protest against some forms of modernity.”

“My dear fellow, modernity simply means democracy.  And when once democracy has been forced on us there’s no good protesting any longer.”

“All the same, you’ll go on protesting, you know.”

“As a harmless private person, yes.  As a critic I must accept a certain amount of defeat at the hands of the majority.”

“But you don’t happen to believe in the majority?”

“I do believe in it,” said he, bitterly.  “I believe that it has destroyed criticism by destroying literature.  A critic only exists through the existence of great men.  And there are no great men nowadays; only a great number of little men.”

“I see.  Othello’s occupation’s gone.”

“Not at all.  Othello’s occupation’s only beginning.  You can’t criticize these people, but you must review them.  And I assure you it means far more labour and a finer discrimination to pick out your little man from a crowd of little men than to recognize your great man when you see him.”

“When you see him—­”

“Ah yes—­when I see him.  But where is he?  Show me,” said Jewdwine, “one work of unmistakable genius published any time in the last five, the last ten years.”

Rickman looked at him and said nothing.  And to Jewdwine his silence was singularly uncomfortable.  He would have been more uneasy still but for his conviction that the serenity in Rickman’s eyes was reflected from the eyes of Fielding.  Rickman, he thought, was rather too obviously elated at the great man’s praise; and the exhibition of elation was unpleasant to him.  Worse than all, he realized that Rickman, in spite of his serenity, was hurt.  On the top of that came a miserable misgiving as to the worthiness of his own attitude to his friend.